Monthly Archives: May 2013

This month, Missoula County farmers and ranchers dodged a major bullet when the County decided to keep their Building Department’s permit exemption for ag structures.

Photo by Jacqueline Corday

The current exemption allows farmers and ranchers to be exempted from the building permit process – which requires building plans, inspections, and permitting fees – when building simple agricultural structures. Think of greenhouses, hay barns, or lambing sheds.

Unfortunately, the exemption has been abused by people looking to build barns built for RVs instead of horses and sheds built for storage instead of tools. And one building, near Seeley Lake, collapsed. Seeking to address these abuses and the problems that go along with avoiding permitting, the County developed new language to do away with the ag exemption.

Luckily, we at CFAC were alerted to these changes and quickly rallied folks from around the county to contact their Commissioners to ask them to keep the ag exemption. The Open Lands Committee quickly had a presentation from the Building Department added to their scheduled meeting for last week and as of this week, the ag exemption is off the table!

Way to go Missoulians! Now if we could just get those RVs out of barns…..

[Senators Coburn (D-IL) and Durbin (R-OK)] An amendment that takes a bold first step towards reforming ballooning crop insurance subsidies for wealthy mega-farms. It’s long past time to rein in these subsidies – this common-sense amendment will save taxpayers over $1.3 billion dollars and ensure maximum support goes only to those who need it, not a handful of mega-farms.

[Senators Casey (D-PA) and Harkin (D-IA)] An amendment that authorizes a microloan program tailored for the needs of beginning and military veteran farmers and ranchers. New farmers need access to land, credit, and capital to get their hands in the dirt, and this amendment will help them better access their #1 biggest need – financial capital to launch and sustain their farm businesses.

[Senator Grassley (R-IA)] An amendment that will help level the playing field between independent livestock producers and the large corporate packers and processors who have been trying to change the rules in favor of corporate interests at the expense of family farmers. The meat industry giants – just 4 corporations control over 80% of our nation’s beef, for example – have successfully blocked common-sense rules to give farmers a fair shake in the marketplace and are now moving to strip farmers of even the most basic legal protection against abuse at the hands of the large processors who dominate the industry. This amendment establishes a special counsel office at USDA dedicated to making sure that fair competition rules are enforced.

Our senators could make the difference on these votes – give them a call today!

Lots of folks came out last week for the inaugural Dish: Co-Creating the Best New Ideas on Food and they all came with ideas! Of course… I didn’t take any pictures, but here’s one of my awesome idea organizing process!

Some of the ideas we got for how to improve our local food system were….

Winter market with more supply

Institutional/Wholesale Buyer’s Co-op

Bring more conventional growers to the table

Statewide local marketing campaign

Local/Seasonal food cooking blog that also advertises producers and where to get ingredients

Dehydrated veggies for backpacking & general consumption! Season extension, yo!

Party more!

Better Distribution

Incubator farm

Open space

Celebrate the SB 147 defeat

Consumer demand

Co-op food processing center

(^^ The co-op/B street center commissary could be a venue!^^)

Co-op/land combining shopping to consumer where product is grown – lease space to help pay

Promotion/outreach for Homegrown… it’s a cool group, we should promote it!

I also had a ton of great conversations with folks about how to use water walls in greenhouses to extend our season, fruit marketing, and many more (I know I’m missing some here, so add them in the comments below!).

Are you working on one of these projects? Interested in pursuing one? Got other topics you’d like to have a focus on next time?

The following is a post from Laura Ginsburg about the dairy she and Connie Surber started with the help of Land Link! Enjoy…

Connie and I joined the Land Link program late last summer and started narrowing down the list right away. Because we are going to have a grass-based dairy, we needed a substantial amount of land, good irrigation, and a strong stand of pasture grass. We also wanted to be close enough to Missoula for people to come up for tours and to meet the cows. The property we decided on, and started leasing in November, is exactly what we were looking for.

We are now living on 40 acres outside of St. Ignatius. Our landlords have been great, and are very open to the idea of a small dairy and making improvements or building infrastructure as we need it for our operation. Without Land Link, I think we would still be on the hunt for a suitable and affordable piece of land. Land Link presented us with many options, which allowed us to figure out exactly what we needed and wanted. And because the Land Link program focuses on new and beginning farmers and ranchers, our landlords have been incredibly flexible with us in terms of the lease and using the land because they know we are working out the kinks as we go.

— Laura & Twister

While our dairy will not be in full operation for another 18 months or so, we have started to purchase young stock to build our herd. For more information, see our farm’s Facebook page at: facebook.com/thegoldenyoke

We are thrilled to announce that we’re starting a new project to support our beginning farmers and ranchers!

Photo by Chad Harder

Bringing together training, resources, and equipment on a shared piece of land, incubator farms help new farm businesses get on their feet. Also, the social network built by a bunch of farmers working together is hard to beat!

Photo by Chad Harder

We’re currently looking for 80-100 acres of prime agricultural land and help from funders like you.Join us in getting this program off the ground and helping farmers get on the land!